Each year, amid coursework and extracurricular activities, a new priority begins to loom large in the lives of final-year graduate and undergraduate students — the job search.

For students whose graduation is imminent, or for those hunting for internships, Stanford’s Career Development Center (CDC) offers a variety of services and resources to aid the student job quest.

One example is the Reference File Service, which “offers a convenient way for you to distribute your letters of reference for employment, graduate admissions, fellowships, internships and scholarships,” according to the CDC Web site.

Dietra Woods, from the CDC’s reference file and administrative services department, said that students who use the service are divided uniformly across the undergraduate and graduate populations and that most hear about it through workshops offered by the CDC, information on the Web site and by word-of-mouth.

“We store the resumes, CVs and reference letters of undergraduates, graduate students and alumni for up to 10 years since the last time they used our service,” Woods said.

Students can learn more and register for Reference File Service through the CDC Web site.

Another service offered by the CDC is Cardinal Recruiting — Stanford’s on-campus interview program which, the Web site states “provides students with an opportunity to interview with employers during the fall, winter and spring quarters. Most interviews are for full-time, regular positions for graduating students, although some interviews are for intern and summer positions.”

In order to use this service, students need to register online for a Cardinal Careers account and activate the Cardinal Recruiting feature. This needs to be done once every academic year. Once registered, students are able to view profiles of participant companies and read job descriptions. More conveniently, they can submit resumes and sign up for interviews.

According to Lance Choy, director of the CDC, the University switched from JobTRAK — since re-named MonsterTRAK — to the current system a little more than two years ago.

“Job postings have been increasing over time since then,” he said, adding that one of the reasons for the shift is that unlike the old system, “our job postings service is free for employers.”

“On-campus recruiting is also essentially a free service,” Choy continued. “Our aim is to keep the program low cost and accessible to employers.”

So, do students actually use Cardinal Recruiting?

“Tons of my friends and fellow seniors use Cardinal Recruiting,” affirmed senior Malinda Groom. “[Investment]-banking and consulting are very popular career choices, and it’s before any other job deadlines, so people try it and see if something works out.”

“I have used Cardinal Recruiting for full-time job opportunities this quarter — it is very convenient since they bring the companies right to you and hold interviews on campus,” she said, adding that she used the service “almost exclusively for strategy consulting.”

“The breadth of companies and industries is very limited, so it’s only helpful for certain majors and interests,” explained Groom, an economics and art history double major.

Choy agreed that certain types of companies and job sectors tend to use Cardinal Recruiting more than others.

“It’s all about the economics,” he said. “Employers need to decide whether it is worthwhile to recruit on campus.”

According to Choy, the result is that many employers who use the Cardinal Recruiting program fall into the categories of consulting, Investment-banking and engineering, although some companies from other areas also participate.

“There is a competitive factor,” he pointed out. “Some employers have come in the past but cannot compete with the salaries offered by I-banking and consulting firms.”

To address this issue, Choy explained that the CDC is looking at “new strategies to diversify,” such as holding boutique fairs like the recent civil engineering career fair, which was attended by a number of construction companies. He added that similar events — such as a public service career fair and a liberal arts career fair — will also be held in the coming months.

In addition, he said that around 40 percent of jobs are acquired through contacts, networks, friends or faculty, and that students and recent alumni should take advantage of resources such as the Stanford Career Network and inCircle — the Stanford alumni-only social and professional network.

“The job search can be very long,” conceded Choy. “Cardinal Recruiting only accounts for about 20 percent of hires. It can take months after graduating to get a job. Some career fields are all about networking and some students hate networking. Other students plan to move to LA or DC before looking for a job. It all depends on what they want to do.”

“Some students are in a silent panic, hearing about second-round interviews and thinking that they are behind,” he added. “But the reality is that they are making the wrong assumptions. They shouldn’t lose motivation or feel inadequate. They need to come up with a plan and do some research.”

He said that the CDC offers individual appointments with career counselors and workshops on how to develop effective job-search strategies.

“In some ways consulting and I-banking are the paths of least resistance,” Choy observed. “There are lots of other exciting things out there.”